Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
As some background, like Ben, I joined the army at the ripe old age of 17, in 1989, and had 10 years as a soldier. During that time, I did an arts degree in English lit and psychology part-time, and then an honours degree in psychology, before being sponsored as a full-time medical student with the army. I then served in the army as a doctor for a period of time, before transferring to the reserves and doing my training as a psychiatrist.
I deployed to Afghanistan in 2013 and was embedded at the role 3 in Kandahar as a mental health provider. After finishing my fellowship, I completed a Ph.D. looking at culturally specific transdiagnostic and peer-led programs for military veterans and emergency services personnel. Through this, along with my other clinical work, I ended up being involved in the royal commission into veteran suicide, the same as Ben, and eventually I started working with our veterans' affairs department. Last year, in July, Secretary Alison Frame created the position of chief psychiatrist, and I was appointed to that.
In my clinical work and my history and engagement as a soldier, and then as a doctor and a psychiatrist, I've had to be deeply involved in suicide and suicidality because it's so commonly associated with mental health problems. As Ben identified, there are also a number of other key factors that need to be addressed when we look at this particular population group, such as service culture, cultural conditioning and service identity.
As Ben also identified, those become vulnerabilities either when service systems and processes are weaponized, which includes military sexual abuse, or when the person transitions out. This involves how they navigate that process, which is actually a transition of identity, a transition of community and a transition of culture, along with needing to find some new sense of purpose and meaning. This can be particularly difficult when the person has mental health concerns or physical injuries, such as wounds and things like that.
My work in the department around suicide and suicidality has come from a number of different positions. This is primarily because, to a psychiatrist, mental health concerns and suicide are obviously not uncommon things. That was something I saw first-hand in my uniformed service as well.
When we're talking about suicide, we absolutely need to talk at the individual level, but we also need to include community, as Ben identified, and then services and processes from the government and from the wider health systems themselves. On suicide itself, in Australia, for example, our Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has been collecting suicide data for defence and the veterans community since 2017. The figures for 2023 were 78 serving and ex-serving members who unfortunately died by suicide. That was actually lower than it had been in previous years, and the numbers have been trending down, which does suggest that we're doing something good.
The problem with these numbers, even though that's a high figure, is that they're actually relatively low. Suicide in general is significantly complex and very nuanced in terms of what happens when, how and why, in particular. The data we've seen from Australia shows that up to 70% of people who do end up dying by suicide aren't actually engaged in our veterans' affairs system at all. While it's really important to have veteran-friendly services, we also need to ensure that services in the wider system, both in the public and the private systems, are engaged in things as well.
One of the things I'm very proud to say I've been working on is our department's national suicide prevention plan. This has been developed in conjunction with the national suicide prevention office for Australia and their plan as well. I've provided copies of that to the clerk for your information, which we can discuss at a later date.
Thank you.